head to head · open source
Milvus vs Apache IoTDB
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars, 4,327 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache IoTDB has 6,426 stars, 1,163 forks, 734 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Milvus leads on adoption by 625% (46,578 vs 6,426 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Apache IoTDB is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Apache IoTDB 18%. Apache IoTDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Milvus | Apache IoTDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Milvus if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Apache IoTDB if
- You want the Apache IoTDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Apache IoTDB fits your workflow better
About Milvus
What is Milvus? 🐦 Milvus is a high performance vector database built for scale. It powers AI applications by efficiently organizing and searching vast amounts of unstructured data, such as text, images, and multi modal information. 🧑💻 Written in Go and C++, Milvus implements hardware acceleration for CPU/GPU to achieve best in class vector search performance. Thanks to its fully distributed and K8s native architecture, Milvus can scale horizontally, handle tens of thousands of search queries on billions of vectors, and keep data fresh with real time streaming updates. Milvus also supports Standalone mode for…
read the full Milvus overview →
About Apache IoTDB
English 中文 IoTDB Overview IoTDB (Internet of Things Database) is a data management system for time series data, which provides users with specific services, including data collection, storage and analysis. Due to its lightweight structure, high performance and usable features, together with its seamless integration with the Hadoop and Spark ecosystem, IoTDB meets the requirements of massive dataset storage, high throughput data input, and complex data analysis in the industrial IoT field. Click for More Information IoTDB depends on TsFile which is a columnar storage file format designed for time series data. The…
read the full Apache IoTDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Apache IoTDB more popular?
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars and Apache IoTDB has 6,426. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and Apache IoTDB free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Apache IoTDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and Apache IoTDB?
Milvus is written in Go and Apache IoTDB in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Milvus or Apache IoTDB?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,578 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Apache IoTDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.